


Sleeping Beauty

by Downunderdowns



Category: Fairy Tales & Related Fandoms, Original Work
Genre: Gen, Short One Shot, Sleeping Beauty Elements, i felt like i should post something so here it is, wrote this long ago
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-22
Updated: 2020-06-22
Packaged: 2021-03-04 12:14:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24849607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Downunderdowns/pseuds/Downunderdowns
Summary: A very quick retelling of sleeping beauty with a twist.





	Sleeping Beauty

Once upon a time, in a faraway kingdom, there was a king and queen. Now the king and queen had everything they could want, except a child. After many years of fruitless praying, they sought out the most powerful faerie in the land and begged her to grant their wish. And grant it she did, for after one year the queen gave birth to a lovely girl child. To celebrate the birth they sent out invitations to a grand party. However, faeries are notoriously hard to find and although the invitations did reach some, the faerie who had granted the wish never received one. 

Thinking herself forgotten, she burned with fury. On the night of the banquet she entered the hall and cursed the infant in front of all the guests, for she knew that none of the fey folk gathered there could dispel her curse. The princess would die at the age 16. The hall erupted, but the faerie was already gone. The queen and king begged the other faeries to save their daughter, each refused at first, for the curse was too strong. The queen wailed inconsolably, and the babe, woken by the din began to cry. Taking pity on them, the faeries agreed to combine their powers and endeavor to remove the curse. All except one, who knew the risks; after all, magic is fickle and often goes wrong if not controlled properly. She watched as the others faded, the curse still unbroken. But something had changed. She would have to wait to find out what that was.

16 years later she watched with horror as the princess died. Now she knew what the effects of attempts to break the curse had done and what she had to do now. Using her powers she cast a spell of sleep over the entire castle. Thorny vines of magic grew, sealing the castle. Her magic and life spent, the faerie faded, becoming a formless, powerless wraith.

Soon, rumors of a sleeping princess spread throughout the land and princes flocked to the castle in hopes of waking her. But none of them ever returned and the stories were eventually forgotten. Until one day many years later, a prince came upon the story in an old book. He was the 5th prince of his family and as he had no chance of inheriting the crown, he decided to try his luck by searching for the fabled princess. 

After many days of wandering, he came upon a castle cloaked with thorns, which he broke through with much difficulty. Inside, were many people, dead or sleeping he did not know, for he simply hurried to find the princess. At last be found her, in a dark stone room devoid of windows. She lay unmoving, her crown gleamed darkly, reflecting the flames of the small torch the prince had brought. He leaned down to kiss her cold lips. She moved, fast as a striking cobra. The prince felt an icy cold sinking into his shoulder. His knees weakened and everything went dark. 

The princess stepped back; the prince fell to the floor. Unwillingly, the princess lay back on the bed. Her eyes, glowing red in the dark room, shut and licking the blood from her lips, she fell into a deep sleep once more. 

In the corner of the room, the wraith of a faerie drifted. Her brethren could not have known what would happen when they cast the magic that created this undying creature that eternally hungered for blood. The wraith stared at the corpse of the prince. 99, she thought. One more and her spells of sleep and containment would be broken. She sincerely hoped, for the sake of humans and faeries alike, that that one more would not come.

Far away in the other kingdom, the 4th prince picked up the tattered book his younger brother had left behind. He looked at it curiously. It was titled simply, “Sleeping Beauty.”


End file.
